Method for inducing a merge candidate block and device using same

Abstract

The present invention relates to a method for inducing a merge candidate block and a device using same. An image decoding method involves decoding motion estimation region (MER) related information; determining whether or not a predicted target block and a spatial merge candidate block are included in the same MER; and determining the spatial merge candidate block to be an unavailable merge candidate block when the predicted target block and the spatial merge candidate block are included in the same MER. Accordingly, by parallely performing the method for inducing a merge candidate, parallel processing is enabled and the computation amount and implementation complexity are reduced.

The invention claimed is: 
     
       1. A method of decoding a video signal, comprising:
 determining whether a spatial merge candidate block is not decoded yet; 
 determining whether the spatial merge candidate block is included in a same MER as a current prediction block; 
 when the spatial merge candidate block is already decoded and is not included in the same MER as the current prediction block, determining that the spatial merge candidate block is an available merge candidate block for inter prediction of the current prediction block; 
 generating a merge candidate list of the current prediction block, the merge candidate list including the available merge candidate block and a temporal merge candidate block, the temporal merge candidate block being included in a picture having a different temporal order from a current picture including the current prediction block; and 
 performing inter prediction of the current prediction block based on the merge candidate list, 
 wherein the spatial merge candidate block includes at least one of neighboring blocks adjacent to the current prediction block, the neighboring blocks including a left neighboring block, a top neighboring block, a top-right neighboring block, a left-bottom neighboring block, and a top-left neighboring block, 
 wherein when a size of the MER is 8×8 and a size of a coding block is 8×8, at least one of the neighboring blocks is replaced to a replacement block located outside the MER, 
 wherein when the size of the MER is not 8×8 and the size of coding block is not 8×8, none of the neighboring blocks is replaced to the replacement block located outside the MER, and 
 wherein the coding block includes the current prediction block whose a size of 8×4 or 4×8. 
 
     
     
       2. The method of  claim 1 , wherein whether the spatial merge candidate block is included in the same MER as the current prediction block is determined by using parallel merge level information. 
     
     
       3. The method of  claim 2 , wherein the parallel merge level information is information related to a size of the MER. 
     
     
       4. The method of  claim 2 , wherein the inter prediction of each of prediction blocks in the MER is performed in parallel. 
     
     
       5. The method of  claim 2 , wherein whether the spatial merge candidate block is included in the same MER as the current prediction block is determined by using further position information of the current prediction block and position information of the spatial merge candidate block. 
     
     
       6. The method of  claim 5 , wherein when a value resulting from a bit shift operation of the position information of the current prediction block is not equal to a value resulting from the bit shift operation of the position information of the spatial merge candidate block, it is determined that the spatial merge candidate block is not included in the same MER as the current prediction block. 
     
     
       7. The method of  claim 6 , wherein the bit shift operation is performed using the parallel merge level information.